A coronavirus-infected person faced inhuman suffering and harassment before death came to relieve him of all humiliation on Saturday. The story has been posted on Facebook page by the son of that 70-year-old person.

Under the heading ‘Demise of a father and failure of a son’, Iqbal Abdullah, son of the deceased, wrote: “I never thought that I would have to write about my father’s death this way. But after watching some false reports on media, I was forced to write some facts on Facebook.”

When Iqbal's father felt unwell on March 16, their driver took him to a private hospital in Kalyanpur that afternoon. “At that time, I was in the office. Upon my return home, I came to know that the doctor suspected him to be affected with the coronavirus and recommended Covid-19 tests,” he wrote.

“On the same night, we started calling the IEDCR number. Around an hour and a half later, we were able to communicate with them. They said my father didn’t need any test, ciring reasons that he didn’t return from abroad and didn’t come in contact with any foreigner. I told them my father goes to the mosque regularly and that he might have contracted the infection from there.”

The IEDEC told Iqbal that the virus did not infect the community yet in Bangladesh and that he had no reason to worry. He took his ailing father around 10.30pm to a big hospital in Shyamoli and consulted a specialist doctor.

The doctor told Iqbal that his father had pneumonia and had to be given pneumonia treatment.  “But no hospital in Bangladesh will admit this patient, you treat him at home,” the doctor told him.  The son came back home that night and gave his father a nebuliser and an antibiotic.

On March 17, Iqbal took his father to the hospital at Shyamoli. They examined his father and said the patient would need ICU support. But they said they could not give their ICU for his father’s treatment. Next, Iqbal spoke to the Care Hospital and got him admitted to the ICU. After 15 minutes, the hospital authorities told him that they could not keep the patient.

The son went to another hospital in Kalyanpur. “They provided a cabin for my father as no bed was available at their ICU. Next, I contacted the Square Hospital for a bed in their ICU. But the Square Hospital management told us to go there with all papers, but not with the patient. They told me that his admission would be allowed only after seeing all the papers.”

Around 12.30 pm, the doctor at the hospital told the son that the patient needed a bed in ICU.  “I contacted several hospitals, but no bed was available at their ICUs,” said the son.

Finally, the harried son and his younger brother went to the Delta Hospital and got their father admitted to that hospital at 4am on March 19. The patient was put on life support system.

“The hospital authorities and I tried to contact IEDCR a number of times. But they failed to do so. On March 19, the IEDCR agreed to carry out the tests. The next day, they informed us that the report was positive,” Iqbal said.

“They told us to stay at home for 15-day quarantine,” he added.

Since the report was positive, the Delta Hospital created a lot of pressure on them to remove the life support. “But we continued to tell them not to remove the life support without our permission. But they didn’t even go to the patient and didn’t even let us enter the ICU. My father finally died around 3am on March 21,” Iqbal said.

“We failed to arrange for the proper treatment of my father. Nothing can be tragic than this. We’ve been staying at home for 15 days in compliance with the government’s directive,” he added.

The son has alleged that some media outlets are spreading canards that his brother-in-law has come from abroad and he was the carrier. “This is blatant falsehood. I’ve two brothers-in law. My elder sister and her husband are professors at two government colleges in Chattogram.”

“Another brother-in-law lives in Japan. But he didn’t come to Bangladesh over the past one year. My elder sister and one brother-in-law came to our home from Chittagong on March 19. They are still with us in home-quarantine,” he added.